David

  • Clean desk, clean mind

    In anticipation of our baby arriving in four weeks, I moved from what was formerly my office and now baby room to Julia’s office. It happened quickly one morning to accommodate some carpentry work being done in my office, so Julia didn’t have time to vacate before I moved in. It was an amusing office change because Julia’s desk was a total shit show. It was covered in papers, sticky notes, half-burnt candles, and random unused electronics. Not a great environment to begin the working day.

    To rewind a few years, Onex underwent a major office renovation while I was working there. About two years in, the renovation was completed, and I moved into a gorgeous new private office at the top of Brookfield Place overlooking Toronto Island and the CN tower. It was a fantastic perk of working there. When we moved into the new offices, we were informed that Gerry (the founder) had one hard rule he expected everyone in a private office to follow: nothing was to be left out or be visible on the desks when you went home at night. This was met with eye rolling and frustration from most employees, myself included. A lot of my day was spent reading research, presentations, and taking written notes. I generally worked with a lot of hard copy paper and prior to moving into the new office most of my desktop real estate was occupied by stacks of it. If the expectation is I’m working into all hours of the evening then why should the senior team care how much stuff is on my desk?

    Despite my grumbling, I complied with the request to clear my desk each night. At first, I did the bare minimum: I would re-locate stacks of paper into a filing cabinet at night and pull them all out again and spread them across my desk every morning. This became tedious. So over time, I started to sort, dispose, and recycle contents more frequently so the volume of ‘stuff’ on my desk was more manageable.

    And then over the course of a few months, I began to really appreciate coming in and starting my day with a clean desk every morning. It turned into a habit I’ve maintained since. Having a clean and organized desk helps the mind feel clean and organized. At least it does for me. I’m grateful for being forced into the habit. If your desk looks like Julia’s, give it a try for a week and see how you feel.

  • The Joy of Movies & Golf

    Over the past few years, I have become increasingly drawn to the Movie theater and Golf. In our always connected world, I am more and more grateful and ascribe a bigger premium to activities where I’m able to be entirely present and undistracted. With Movies and Golf, I’m easily able to be present in a way that otherwise requires effort and intent. Even when the movie isn’t particularly good, I find it easy to be present. The same is true on the golf course, even though I’ll be lucky to break 100 this year.

    Recently, I ate at a restaurant that included a phone cubby at the table. I am curious and interested to see whether hospitality experiences increasingly optimize for presence in more deliberate ways. Certainly, with ever shrinking attention spans, I see the opportunity and need.

  • The value of hard constraints

    Hard constraints can be an incredibly powerful force and incentive. Though uncomfortable, putting them in place can force you to innovate and accelerate learning. Despite the benefits, we tend to avoid hard constraints. It’s generally easier to have more flexibility in our lives. This principle applies in work and personal settings.

    Here are a few personal examples to help illustrate.

    1. Learning and speaking a foreign language. When I moved to Dusseldorf in 2016, I was determined to learn German. I started using Duolingo daily and signed up for weekly 1-on-1 private tutoring with a local language instructor. I shared an office with an Austrian woman who spoke multiple languages comfortably. During the first few months, she would start each morning speaking to me in German; nothing work related, just simple questions (“how is your morning going? How was your drive?” etc.). I sort of stumbled through and was generally embarrassed about my lack of competency. I would routinely default back to English and after a while she gave up on the German. If I went out to a restaurant or café, I would start by speaking in German. I’m clearly a native English speaker and nine times out of ten, whoever I was speaking to would start responding in English. To ease my discomfort, I’d then continue in English. As a result, I really didn’t build any proficiency in German and the limited bit I learned has mostly been forgotten. I’m confident if I had imposed a hard constraint on myself, such as demanding my colleague exclusively speak to me in German, I would have vastly improved my skill despite it being uncomfortable. In this case, I relaxed any constraints and chose convenience and comfort at the expense of learning.

    2. Mastering excel and powerpoint shortcuts. A key competency in Investment Banking is mastering excel and powerpoint. To be most efficient requires you to use keyboard shortcuts instead of your mouse. Once you’ve mastered all the keyboard shortcuts, you’re able to produce work at a significantly faster pace. When I first started in banking in 2011, I was familiar with excel and powerpoint but mostly reliant on my mouse. I started to learn some shortcuts but was progressing slowly. Then one day, a more senior Analyst in my office unplugged my mouse and told me he would return it in a week. Suddenly, I had no other option but to use shortcuts for everything. At first, it was painful. Simple tasks took forever. But after a week, I was able to operate entirely using shortcuts. The fixed constraint (no mouse) dramatically accelerated my pace of learning and forced me to master a skill I’m confident otherwise would have taken many months.

    Having hard constraints imposed is uncomfortable. It’s also often necessary to unlock improvement. Generally, if you ask someone to create something in three weeks, they will take three weeks. If you ask someone to create something in one week, they will take one week. Imposing hard constraints is often a balance between uncomfortable and unreasonable and setting those lines is an art in of itself.